Website Covering Amiga 600 as MP3-Player Renovated
Andreas Balke has completely redone his website covering his use of an A600 in his car as an MP3 player,
and added improved, specialized pictures of the innards, the keyboard, and the side view in the car. In
addition to that, he's taking on another project related to mobile Amigas:
Frank's Suitcase-Amiga. (ps) (Translation: dm)

Classic Radio Shows on CD-ROM
The Radio Plays CD-ROMs contain original radio shows from the
USA and Great Britain. The programs are from the 30s to the 70s and have
been specially, digitally prepared and converted to MP3 format for inclusion
on these CD-ROMs. They may thereby played on all computer platforms (Amiga,
Linux, Mac, Windows, modern CD-Players, etc) and an autoplayer for Windows
is included. The Radio Plays represent the genres Adventure, Science
Fiction, Mystery, Western and Mixed. Each CD has about 35 to 48 hours of
programs.

The catalog contains among other things Tarzan, Superman, Buck Rogers, Dr.
Who, Lord of the Rings, The Shadow, Sherlock Holmes and The Lone Ranger.

Dealers may order lots of 10 CDs from our dealer price list. With the order of 51
CDs or more there is an additional rebate of 10 percent. With the order of 100 the
shipping and handling charges are eliminated.

Shipping and handling costs are 12 euros for the first 10 CDs, with more than 10
CDs, there is a 1 euro additional charge for each. These CDs come directly from
the USA. Prices per CD are about 12 to 14 euros. You'll find more information by
clicking on the title link.
(ps) (Translation: dm)

AROS: IRC Channel Moves to New Server
The IRC channel of the alternative operating system AROS is now on the
Freenode IRC network. You can make the connection at irc.freenode.net,
or you can find another Freenode server at
www.freenode.net. Long
nicknames, nick registration and many other things are possible with
this. The channel name is still #aros. (ps) (Translation: dm)

The World's First 32-bit Game Console?
This is not exactly burningly current news, but it is meaningful in an historical
context. On my foraging for exotic game consoles I bumped into a very
interesting Fujitsu product, the FM Towns Marty.

Fujitsu sold a lot of FM Towns PCs in the late 80s. At some point back then,
they decided to develop a game console, and the FM Towns Marty came
from that. The Marty was equipped with a 386 at 16 MHz, later there was a
486 version. It also had 2 megs of RAM. For storage there was a CD-ROM drive and
a 3.5 inch floppy drive. For the graphics there were special custom chips which
made 256 colors from a HiColor palette possible.

But the most interesting thing is: Marty was introduced in 1991! So the CD-32 loses
its title as the first 32-bit console in the world to the Fujitsu Marty. By the way Marty may
also be the second console to come with a CD-ROM drive (after the PC-Engine).

Because of the close compatibility to the FM Towns PCs there were also a lot of
games available, but there were also specialized Marty games, including versions of the
Lucas Arts classics Zak McKraken and
Monkey Island, and I would guess that these were the best versions of these games, what with 256 colors
and not the grisly MIDI music found in the PC version.

Because Marty was not officially sold outside Japan it's difficult to come by information on it. So I suppose the CD-32
could also claim to be the world's first 32-bit game console. (ps) (Translation: dm)

Motivated by the free release of AWeb and other programs, I wrote TurboCalc author Michael
Friedrich a couple weeks ago, to ask if he might entrust TurboCalc to another programmer or
programming group for further development.

Observation: TurboCalc is a spreadsheet (table calculation) program, such as Lotus 1-2-3 (tm) or Excel (tm)
for PCs, or MaxiPlan (tm) for the Amiga.

I got an answer the day before yesterday (excerpt):

Subject: RE: Open Source TurboCalc
Date: Tue, 29 Oct 2002 08:40:51 +0100
...
the idea of open source sounds good, but I am not so sure if others would enjoy working with
my code:

300,000 lines of sparsely commented assembler code is not going to be easy to read, even I had some
problems with it :-)
....
I'll write you again.
Cordially, Michael

His comments so far. Certainly he will want to confer with Stefan Ossowski of GTI.

To raise some question (and spur discussion):

What do past, present (and eventually new) TurboCalc users think of using a further developed
TurboCalc? Please don't write a list of requirements of WHAT needs to be improved or added. You'll get a
chance to express these comments!

Are there programmers who are CAPABLE (this genre is not the simplest)
and who WANT to develop Turbocalc further? I'll do what I can to help and encourage as a Betatester from the start.

RP-Online: Philips don't want to tolerate problems with copyprotected music CDs
»Some copy protected music CDs don't work with several CD or DVD players. If a note about that is missing at the cover this is a fault. Customers might bring in that case the CD back to the dealer and demand their money back.
The Philips company, the inventor of the CD technique and licenser for "Compact Discs", doesn't want to tolerate this fault anymore.
Philips manager Gijs Wirtz said to "Computerbild": "CDs, which engender problems by replaying them do not fulfill the rule for a Compact
Disc. A real CD should work with every device. Even with CD ROM drives, DVD and car CD players."«
Complete article (German) by the title link. (ps) (Translation: ub)

derStandard.at: Linux ready for commercial use
»Study confirms the full usability of that open source operating system for commercial use as done by small firms or big companies.
There have some details from a big Linux study which will be published in
the middle of November went public already. The market research institute Bloor Research, specialized on technology studies, has published a study, hired by IBM , which declares Linux as a usable operating system for firms independent of their size.«
Complete article (German) available via the title link. (ps) (Translation: ub)

Compiler: Free Pascal V1.0.6 for Amiga in seight
After version 1.0.6 of the compilers Free Pascal has been published officially and a first snapshot (version 1.0.7) for
Linux-m68k is available, you might not wait too long for the Amiga-m68k version.

The latest Amiga version is based on Version 0.99.5.
(ps) (Translation: ub)

P.S.: The archive is packed with -lh7-, I hope XFH is able to decrunch this.

P.P.S.: The archive was exchanged and can be decrunched with Lha.

Note:
If you replace your V11.3 version with the new makecdromfs.module V45.7,
then MakeCD 3.2 beta 10 also allows you to write Joliet and HFS tracks.
This module also supports a better, extended file list format - see the
readme that is included with the new module. It is brought to you by
Heinz Wrobel, who should be contacted regarding all problems with the
makecdromfs.module.
(ps) (Translation: ub)

AmigaTalk V2.2 uploaded to Aminet
I had to update V2.1 of AmigaTalk to correct some minor problems,
hence the unplanned uploading of V2.2. (The update isn't arrived yet
on Aminet).

HISTORY
~~~~~~~
For version 2.2 the following enhancements/bug fixes were made:

Fixed the install script (by deleting the History.txt copy
action & including the Images directory in the distribution).

Added Status Window coordinate bookeeping to the AmigaTalk.env
file.

Added more error detection code to initialization of the
AmigaTalk screen code so that the Command & Status window
will fill whatever screen you select. I've been able to check
almost all screen modes that the CyberVision64/3D uses (except
for 16-bit 1024 * 768, which shows a black screen).
AmigaTalk will not let you use a screen smaller than 640 * 400,
so don't try to. If you rename AmigaTalk.env, AmigaTalk will
use the coordinates from your Workbench screen (or whatever
screen is active).

Event: Website for THE PARTY updated
The website of one of the oldest scene parties at all, THE PARTY, was put
online with an new design today. The Party is held, like every year, from
December the 27th to December the 29th in central Denmark at the congress
center in Aars. Unfortunately there is only little left from that scene
spirit of the first years. The Party became more a meeting point for
gamers and those, who only want to fill up their hard drives via network.
Those who are atracted by the prizes (at least EUR 1000 for the 1st prize
at the mixed double demo competition) and the professional organisation
should have a view to the new homepage.
(ps) (Translation: ub)

Event: Radwar birthday party in early November in Heinsberg
At November the 9th 17 years ago the C64/Amiga group Radwar was foundeed and
for that score the boys from Heinsberg like to go wild and party once again! Mws, Arnd, Crazy & Co. have gained some attention with well organized scene parties during the recent years. This year it is again that you leave your own computers at home because it's a party for the people not for their equipment. It's partytime! (ps) (Translation: ub)

We have patiently waited for the go ahead to announce one more attendee,
subject to confirmation. We are now able to do so, but first we would
like to recap on what is already happening.

Amiga - Announcements/AOS4.0

Eyetech - AmigaOne

Thendic France/Bplan - Pegasos/Morphos

Quake II/Software Tycoon/Tales of Tamar (Buy and Demonstrated)

Other Exhibitors:

Fore-Matt Home Computing

Kicksoft

Weird Science

100% Amiga Magazine

The Crypt

Total Amiga Magazine

ZeoNeo

Mediator Support Team

Usergroups:

Amiga North Thames

Amiga Support Association

Blackpool Amiga Club

Huddersfield Amiga Usergroup

and of course, South Essex Amiga Link

Presentations:

Amiga One Presentation

Amiga Announcement

OS4 Presentation

After Show Q&A Session

Now, we are proud to announce that the last attendees will be:
Hyperion-Entertainment. Yes, you read that right, the Hyperion Team
are flying over from Germany to the UK not only to ensure you get your
copies of Quake II, (very special delivery) but Ben Hermans will
personally host the OS4 presentation with the rest of the Hyperion
Team in support.

World of Amiga Southeast 2002. Dare you be anywhere else?

More on the Q&A Session and Presentation/Announcements running order
tomorrow. Please note, Doors open 12 noon sharp. No earlier. (ps)

Golem: Yahoo favorites PHP
»PHP substitutes ASP, Java or XSLT
Yahoo switch for a major part of their webpages to PHP, this was announced by
Michael J. Radwin at the PHP-Con 2002. Yahoo will mainly substitute their proprietary systems by this open source scripting language.«
Complete article see title link. (ps) (Translation: ub)

pro-linux.de: "DIN A4" for the Internet
»1dok.org aims to establish an open and independent standard format for electronic documents based on XML by OpenOffice.org, said the organization.
An essential part of this project is the initiation of a community process with getting attending as most citizens (Internet users), firms, universities and administration departments as possible to dwell the need for establishing a standard document format to the government.
On that score the registered association 1dok.org
was foundet.«

Further information is available via the the title link and at
1dok.org. (ps) (Translation: ub)

Text viewer: Next Version 3.5
The new version 3.5 of the text viewer Next of Jürgen Klawitter is
released. NEXT is text viewer, but also a replacement for AmigaGuide, a
HTML-Offline-Browser, Datatypes-Viewer, Decruncher, Printutility, and
many more.

Database: XBaze Version 7.2 Beta 6
Rafal Kaczmarczyk has released version 7.2 beta of his database 'XBaze'. The program
features an easy-to-use editor for the input of data and the layout (Drag&Drop). It
runs under AmigaOS 3.0